AMD reveals Radeon R9 280 graphics card for gaming beyond 1080p

Taking it to the limit

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AMD is showing no signs of slowing when it comes to its graphics cards as it's outing yet another Radeon GPU.

The Radeon R9 280 slides in right below the R9 280X and is posturing for the beyond-1080p graphics pole. The newest member of the R9 family is primed for monitors running 1600p and title settings turned up high, AMD revealed.

A few specs match between the R9 280 and 280X, though there are plenty of differences. For one, the 280 runs 1,792 stream processors as opposed to the X's 2,048. The new card's compute performance amounts to 3.34 TFLOPS vs 4.1 TFLOPS, and engine clock tops out at 933Mhz, less than the 280X's 1GHz peak.

The R9 280's 3GB GDDR5 memory burns on a 384-bit bus, and memory speeds circles 5.0Gbps, just under the 280X's 6.0Gbps. Last but not least, the card's board power averages 250W.

Radeon R9 280 on the eight ball

The new graphics card stows most of AMD's gaming solutions, including PowerTune, CrossFire and Eyefinity.

The R9 280 features Graphics Core Next and fully supports DirectX 11.2 and Mantle.

The card is available starting this week, though you may have better luck finding next week when availability widens. Consumers should expect a starting MSRP price of $279 (about £167/AU$312).